The College of Criminology & Criminal Justice is happy to announce that Colin Jacobsen is one of two students to win the Edward H. and Marie C. Kingsbury Undergraduate Writing Award and $2,000 cash prize for the Outstanding Honors Thesis at FSU! This is the second time in three years one of our students has won this award, given annually to recognize outstanding writing at the undergraduate level as reflected in an Honors in the Major thesis.

Doctoral Student Joshua Cochran received the “ACJS Michael C. Braswell/Anderson Publishing Outstanding Student Paper Award” for 2013. This award is for the most outstanding student paper presented at the 2012 Annual ACJS Meeting. The title of Joshua’s paper is “The Ties that Bind or the Ties that Break: Examining the Relationship between Visitation and Prisoner Misconduct”. Joshua will be accepting the award at the annual Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences Meeting in Dallas, Texas.

Prof. Daniel Mears' book, American Criminal Justice Policy, published by Cambridge University Press, is the 2013 winner of the Outstanding Book Award presented  by  the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences.  The award is given annually “in recognition of the best book published in the area of criminal justice” and that has made an  “extraordinary contribution to the study of crime and criminal justice.”  The award will be presented at the Academy’s annual meeting, held  March 19-23 in Dallas, Texas.

Professor Carter Hay’s Residential Positive Achievement Change Tool (R-PACT) Validation project with the Florida Department of Juvenile Justice (DJJ) focuses on juvenile offenders in residential facilities. The Residential Positive Achievement Change Tool (R-PACT) is used by DJJ to track the criminogenic needs and risks of offenders regarding such things as educational progress, relationships with family members, attitudes about drugs and alcohol, and the development of social skills for controlling emotions and behavior.

Three faculty members of the College — Kevin Beaver, Abigail Fagan and Brian Stults— have been found to be among the nation’s most productive criminology and criminal justice scholars in a study that focuses on academic rank to reveal both rising academic stars and the top stars overall. The study, “Criminology and Criminal Justice Hit Parade: Measuring Academic Productivity in the Discipline,” conducted by Heith Copes, David N. Khey and Richard Tewksbury, was published May 15 in the Journal of Criminal Justice Education.

Joshua and Ryan have both received distinguished university awards.  Joshua Cochran received the 2012 Graduate Student Research and Creativity Award.  This award recognizes the superior contributions of graduate students to research and creative endeavors.  Additional information about the award can be found here.

The journal, American Jails, an official publication of the American Jail Association, featured recent research conducted by the Center for Criminology and Public Policy Research in the January/February 2012 issue, Volume XXV/ Number 6.

Journal of Drug Issues (JDI) continues its dedication to providing a professional and scholarly forum centered on the national and international problems associated with drugs, especially illicit drugs. With international contributors and subscribers, JDI is an instrument widely used by research scholars, public policy analysts, and those involved in the day-to-day struggle against the problem of drug abuse.

The project entitled Building and Enhancing Criminal Justice Research-Practitioner Partnerships furthers the long-standing and productive partnership between the Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) and the Center for Criminology and Public Policy Research in the College of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Florida State University.

The Florida Department of Corrections (FDOC) received a multi-year grant from the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), to develop a system that utilizes data elements from FDOC’s various databases into a unified, real-time data warehouse. The Correctional Operations Trend Analysis System (COTAS) uses historical data to model the probability of incidents of violence occurring in all FDOC facilities in the state (at the facility and inmate levels).